Community of inquiry

A community of inquiry is the social and educational context that leads to “questioning, reasoning, connecting, deliberating, challenging, and developing problem-solving techniques” as described by Matthew Lipman (2003).

Lipman (2003, p. 20) attributes the concept of ‘community of inquiry’ to 19th century philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. According to Lipman, Peirce originally meant the community of scientists. John Dewey broadened this to the educational context as a whole (Lipman, 2003, pp. 20-21). Students and teachers involved in inquiry form a community of inquiry under certain circumstances. Therefore, a holistic understanding of a community of students and teachers engaged in authentic inquiry is the working definition of the key term ‘community of inquiry’. There is a gestalt dimension to the concept that is underlined by Lipman. He points to “….the profound educational implications of fusing together, as Peirce had, the two independently powerful notions of inquiry and community into the single transformative concept of community of inquiry” (2003, p. 84).

Paradigms

Lipman also provides a useful set of antonymic statements that contrasts the standard educational paradigm with the reflective educational paradigm in which communities of inquiry can occur.

The standard paradigm poses the following:

• education as knowledge transmission
• knowledge as unambiguous, unequivocal and un-mysterious,
• knowledge is divided into non-overlapping disciplines
• teachers as authoritative sources of knowledge.

The reflective paradigm, in contrast, poses the following:

• education is the outcome of participation in a teacher-guided community of inquiry
• teachers stir students to think about the world when teachers reveal knowledge to be ambiguous, equivocal, and mysterious,
• knowledge disciplines are overlapping and therefore problematic,
• teachers are ready to concede fallibility,
• students are expected to be reflective and increasingly reasonable and judicious
• the educational process is not information acquisition but a grasp of relationships among disciplines (2003, pp 18-19).

A community of inquiry can be seen to exist to the degree that it avoids the qualities of this standard paradigm and shows the qualities of this reflective paradigm.

Online learning

Lipman's and Dewey's ideas were expanded and applied to online learning contexts in a Canadian project that originated in 1996 at the University of Alberta. The project was led by Randy Garrison, Terry Anderson and Walter Archer. The purpose of the study was to provide conceptual order and a tool for the use of Computer-mediated communication in supporting an educational experience.

Central to the work is a model of community inquiry that constitutes three elements essential to an educational transaction - cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence. Indicators (key words/phrases) for each of the three elements emerged from the analysis of computer conferencing transcripts. The indicators described represent a template or tool for researchers to analyze written transcripts as well as a heuristic guide to educators for the optimal use of computer conferencing as a medium to facilitate an educational transaction. This research suggested that computer conferencing has considerable potential to create a community of inquiry for educational purposes^[1].

This project led to production of many scholarly papers, a book and replication of the Community of Inquiry model by distance education researchers globally^[2].^[3] The Community of Inquiry model is also used to conceptually guide study research and practice in other forms of mediated, blended and classroom education.

Related to

• Community of action
• Community of circumstance
• Community of interest
• Community of place
• Community of position
• Community of practice
• Community of purpose

References

1. ^ L H Ling, Community of Inquiry in an Online Undergraduate Information Technology Course, Journal of Information Technology Education, Volume 6, 2007
2. ^ Shin and Bickel (2008) - in Chris Kimble and Paul Hildreth (2008). Communities of Practice: Creating Learning Environments for Educators. Information Age Publishing. ISBN 1593118635. 
3. ^ Community of InquiryCommunity of Inquiry Research

• Garrison, D. R. and Anderson, T.. (2003)E-Learning in the 21stCentury: A Framework for Research and

Practice. London: Routledge/Falmer, 2003.

• Garrison, D. R., T. Anderson and W. Archer (2000) Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment:

Computer Conferencing in Higher Education. The Internet and Higher Education 2(2-3): 87–105, 2000.

• Dewey, J. (1902). The Child and the Curriculum. Chicago; University of Chicago Press.
• Lipman, M. (2003). Thinking in Education. (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.